Sketchbook Project: Update 4

I really feel like I’m hitting my stride with my sketchbook. At first it seemed that I was all over the place, and I think I still am in a way, but now it’s all starting to fit together like a puzzle, and I’m creating some drawings that I really like and might translate well into larger works of art.

I started this drawing by using a compass to pencil-in concentric circles. Then I added little dots at random intervals on each of the circles and connected them. After that, the drawing evolved and I added feathers because it started to look like a dream catcher.

As I was driving to Baltimore one afternoon, sitting in traffic, I sloooowwwwlyyy rolled by a cell phone tower, silhouetted against the sky. I was intrigued by the pattern of the bars of the tower, and how it changed as I passed it.

This is a simple sketch. I wanted to try drawing a line like variegated yarn. I think it looks pretty cute!

I’m not really sure where the inspiration for this came from, but I wanted to do another multi-color drawing like the one above it.

Pretzels! I drew a pretzel a while ago, and I’m hooked on this motif. I thought about how pretzels are really just lines of dough twisted into the pretzel shape. To fit in with my theme, I arranged 2 dozen pretzels in a grid!

I recently discovered an old compass set that belonged to my father. The first drawing I used one of the compasses to help me draw was the dream catcher sketch (above). The use of the compass in this drawing is a little more obvious. I really love the result! This might be my favorite page so far.

So that’s it for now. I have my work cut out for me with 18 pages down, 22 to go and 8 days to finish. Luckily I’m not drawing spreads since most of my drawings have “bled through” in an interesting manner. The bleed through on the backs of the pages is subtle and is actually the result of drawing on top of my grid guidelines. The ink from the guides actually gets rubbed off when I press firmly with a pencil while drawing. You can see this best on the pages facing the dream catcher and pretzel sketches.

some of them take longer than others. The ones with a lot of detail take a few hours because of all of the lines. It does take a while, but it’s kind of soothing and meditative, and I’ve really enjoyed it!